Re: High ranking lusers

From: carsonat_private
Date: Sun Apr 19 1998 - 01:18:39 PDT

  • Next message: Henry Hertz Hobbit: "Re: High ranking lusers"

    >>>>> "Henry" == Henry Hertz Hobbit <hhhobbitat_private> writes:
    
    Henry> No they aren't secure, at least as a general rule. You can't easily
    Henry> change what a binary does without actually replacing the binary.
    Henry> With a shell script, all kinds of possibilities exist. If you can
    Henry> exit to a shell the possibility of gaining unauthorized root access
    Henry> exists. Trojan statements can be inserted in the shell file to cause
    Henry> damage. What does the floppy device have to do with anything???
    
    Really? You can exit to a shell? And how would you do that? If you write bad
    code in _any_ language, it's insecure.
    
    As for /dev/fd/n, it isn't a floppy disk, it's a file-descriptor filesystem
    that stops the bait-and-switch symlink race. The OS calls /bin/sh (or
    whatever) on the already-opened file as /dev/fd/n (think of it as a
    shell-based fdopen()).
    
    -- 
    Carson Gaspar -- carsonat_private carsonat_private carsonat_private
    http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~carson/home.html
    Queen Trapped in a Butch Body
    



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